Blask Affiliates: a new feature for brand placement tracking

Blask has launched Affiliates, a daily record of where operator brands sit on affiliate pages — which URL, which position, with a screenshot attached.

Affiliates is already live in Blask for Brazil. Operators and affiliates can check their own placements on publisher sites, and the placements of competing brands. The feature is a third-party log of on-page placement: a crawler visits affiliate sites every day, ranks the logos it finds, and stores the capture.

This article covers what that log is for, how the crawl works, and how the screens look in the product.

What it closes, and how the crawler works

Affiliate placement is a contract for a brand appearance on a specific page, in a specific slot, for a set of days. The usual proof has been a screenshot from the same manager who sold the slot. Operators and affiliates can now use Blask Affiliates as an independent third-party source for that appearance. The two use cases below sit on the same log.

An operator — affiliate manager or head of affiliates — uses the log for two jobs. Delivery is whether the brand stood where the invoice says it stood on the days being paid for. Coverage is which publishers already carry competitors, and which of those pages omit the operator’s own brand.

An affiliate — head of content, head of partnerships — reads the same log the other way: which operators already occupy the roundups, on how many URLs, and with what rank over time. If a placement is later disputed, the dated snapshot is an independent record of what was on the page. Both sides work from one definition of “on the page”, refreshed every day.

Every day a crawler finds affiliate sites in the market, opens the pages that list brands, records which logos sit on the page and in what order, and saves a screenshot. Rank is that order, read top to bottom and left to right; only the first appearance of a brand on the page counts.

The screens below are that log inside Blask.

A tour of Affiliates in Blask

The first screen in Affiliates has two tables: a directory of publishers, and a Brands view under Affiliate coverage (BAP, how many sites carry each operator, WoW and MoM). Opening a publisher then a URL leads to Rank history and screenshot proof.

The publisher directory

Affiliates section is available in country view and opens as a table of publishers in the selected market, with search at the top right and a period control. As for 9 of September, Brazil has 315 listed affiliates.

Each row is one affiliate: name, domain, estimated traffic for all pages, how many brands Blask has recognized on that site, and how many URLs are under watch.

Brands: BAP, site count, WoW and MoM

The same first screen also opens a Brands table in the Affiliate coverage view. Filters at the top cover search, license, BAP, and Affiliates; the capture below is dated 8 September and lists 583 brands.

BAP here is the same Brand’s Accumulated Power already used in Blask — the brand’s share of search demand in the geo — sitting next to how many affiliate sites currently carry that brand. WoW and MoM are the week and month changes on that site count (green up, red down, N/A when there is no prior window).

Pages and brands on one site

Clicking a specific affiliate opens the next screen with data for that publisher: pages and brands. Ogol is the example below, where Blask tracks 3 pages and 8 brands.

On Pages table, each line is one URL — title, path, estimated traffic, and how many brands sit on that page. On Brands table, each line is an operator seen on those URLs, with a count of pages.

Rank history, a chosen date, and screenshot proof

Clicking a tracked page opens the next screen: brand Rank on that URL over time, the ranking table for a selected day, and a screenshot per brand. The capture below is Ogol Melhores Cassinos, with 4 brands on the page as of 8 of September.

The chart plots rank across the period for the brands selected in the legend — in this window. The lines sit flat through September, which means those five held the same slots day after day in the crawl.

The table under the chart is the daily log. The date control is set to 8 September, with arrows to step through days and search across the brands. The Screenshot column is the proof for each row: the capture the crawler stored for that brand on that day.

Bottom line

Blask Affiliates is the daily crawl of affiliate pages, starting with 315 publishers and 583 brands in Brazil: directory, brand coverage, page inventory, rank history, and screenshot as a proof. Operators get delivery and competitor coverage; affiliates get occupancy, momentum, and an independent record of what ran.

The section is live in Blask, Brazil first. Open Affiliates from the product sidebar to walk the publisher directory, the brands coverage table, and the rank snapshot on the current date.